An group of scientists from around the world who are dedicated to eliminating nuclear weapons and war have announced plans to hold a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize winners in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2005, Nagasaki city officials said Saturday.
Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, informed Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito of the plan when the two met at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum on Saturday, the officials said.
Ito was quoted by the officials as telling Swaminathan, "At a time when the (U.S.) attack on Iraq has begun, this kind of move will send a message to the world. We want to cooperate fully."
The meeting, to be held on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, will be jointly sponsored by the Pugwash group and the Gorbachev Foundation, headed by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the winner of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Gorbachev Foundation has held annual meetings of Nobel Peace Prize laureates since 1999. The Pugwash group, a Nobel Peace Prize winning organization, will join forces with the foundation to organize the event in 2005, the officials said.
Gorbachev and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, are scheduled to attend the meeting in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the United States dropped atomic bombs in the closing days of World War II.